04/04/2013

This week, the guys are talking about their first smartphones -- Richard Hay has a piece on his first Android phone on the main aNewDomain.net site today -- and the 40th anniversary of the first mobile call. A Motorola exec made it from the first commerically available mobile phone, the Motorola DynaTAC, in 1973.

Uploaded by the Linux Foundation onto YouTube today, the short video "takes you inside the process by which the largest collaborative development project in the history of computing is organized. Based on the annual report "Who Writes Linux," this is a powerful and inspiring story of how Linux has become a community-driven phenomenon."

03/07/2013

Here on aGNUdomain we take a look at all things Linux, GNU and FOSS. We're fans of the Android mobile operating system. And we syndicate our Android podcast Attack of the Androids here each week.

Take a listen to this week's episode as we discuss topics such as the HTC One camera specs and Samsung's dominance in the world of Android. Should Google be concerned about this? This week's hosts include producer Mat Lee, Seth Heringer, Shane Brady, Eric Finkenbiner and me.

02/25/2013

aGNUdomain.net - This weekend I formatted my Nexus 4 and loaded up Canonical's new Ubuntu Touch Preview. I was impressed by its polish and beauty.

Ubuntu Touch launched Feb. 19, 2013. As aGNUdomain's Ant Pruitt explained, Ubuntu Touch is Canonical's attempt to break into the mobile market. Smart Linux users already know how to run full-fledged Ubuntu on some Android devices, but this preview marks the first time Google released a developer version immediately installable on the latest four Nexus devices from Google.

If you have a Galaxy Nexus, Nexus 4, Nexus 7 or Nexus 10 -- and you're feeling adventurous -- you can download the Ubuntu Touch preview code now.

Installing Ubuntu Touch was simple, though the current installation method is only supported using Ubuntu for desktop. After downloading the code only one command is required: phablet-flash -b.

If you are inclined to check out Ubuntu Touch yourself, be warned that your entire phone will be erased during the installation process. It is also possible that you could break your phone.

In reality there is not too much to see at this point. The folks at Canonical correctly labeled this release a "developer preview." You can think of it more like a model home. It is certainly a beautiful operating system but is hardly functional.

If you would rather wait for a more fleshed-out version of Ubuntu Touch, included are some screenshots of it running on my Nexus 4. Enjoy!

Have you flashed Ubuntu Touch? Do you think it has potential or is another non-starter? Leave a comment on the site and over on Google Plus.

02/21/2013

The developer preview of Linux distro Ubuntu is now available for tablets and mobile phones. Excited? I am. Well, I was initially. Sadly, I'm a Galaxy Nexus (Toro) owner. The preview is available to Nexus devices but only the GSM variants. I own the Nexus 7 tablet but I decline to install the preview for now.

The OS demostrations I've seen of late seem to be promising, offering yet another open platform for our mobile devices. Ubuntu's video details more on the features of the OS for tablets and phones. My first glance at the real world views of Ubuntu Phone lead me to think the OS was slightly lagging in performance. The UI is nice, but the devices being tested showed slow transitions from screen to screen and app to app.

I had to take this first look with a grain of salt. I mean, the OS is in preview. It's not going to be perfect just yet.

I shared the information about the developer preview to my circles on Google+ It was received with mixed reactions from my wonderful geek followers. Some felt that removing the Nexus experience from current devices was pointless. Others were just curious to see what the OS had to offer.

Darryl Barnes is clearly excited about the OS preview. "Downloaded. Installing to Nexus 4 tonight ... can't wait to dump Android," he says. There are concerns that the preview will not allow for the radio to handle cell calls. It will be a WiFi device only. Barnes has other ideas.

"I will have data working on mine by this weekend," he says. "It's nothing to reverse-engineer the radio for use under Ubuntu."

I can't wait to hear about Barnes' progress on getting the radios to work for him. Hopefully he will keep us in the community updated.

If I catch a wild streak in my personality, I may take the dive in formatting my Nexus 7 to play around with the OS preview, but I won't make any promises. What are your thoughts on the preview? Will you experiment with the images available for your Nexus device? Leave me a comment with your plan and thoughts on Ubuntu Tablet/Phone Developer Preview.

I believe my first version was 9.x, but I am now up to version 12.10 and the Unity interface.

Originally, I installed Linux because my PC at the time had very limited hardware. The CPU was a single core chip and the memory was barely useful with just 1GB on board. There wasn't much else I could do to the rig that would allow Windows XP to run better or even upgrade to a newer version of Windows. Via my Google+ and Twitter feed, I polled my followers and circles. I asked "Why are you using Linux on your computer?" The feedback was tremendous from my fellow geeks. Here are the results.

Image credit Ant Pruitt for aGNUdomain

I based the poll question on the three fairly-broad parameters above:

Hardware limitations on current PC (low RAM, slower CPU, etc ...)

To better protect users from malware

To geek-out with something new

As you can see from the pie chart, my circles and followers wanted to just geek-out. I can't disagree. I enjoy playing around with my Linux distro as well as adding different free and open source software (FOSS) for daily use.

Those that voted also had an opportunity to comment on the poll. Sure, geeking-out on something new was the poll's leading vote recipient, but most of the comments were dealing more with how powerful Linux can be, as well as support for FOSS. Hobbyist developer and XDA-Developers contributer Adam Outler says via Google+:

Ant Pruitt, your poll is invalid. I am an avid Linux user but I don't use it for any of the reasons in your poll. I support open source. I dislike having to pay when there are open source solutions whereby using those solutions contributes in a small way to betterment of the future of software.

I enjoyed using Apache for serving up my multimedia over 3G as well as Plex Media Server. All are great tools.

So the verdict is in, so far. Those of us currently running a Linux distro are believers of supporting the free and open source platform, and we enjoy getting more performance out of computers that other operating systems haven't been able to provide.

John Carmack, the man behind some of the most influential video games of all time, caused a flurry of discussion over on Reddit last week when he expressed his opinions regarding native Linux ports of popular video games. Carmack's response on Reddit was an eloboration of a Twitter update he made on Feb. 4th where he stated that, "Improving Wine for Linux gaming seems like a better plan than lobbying individual game developers for native ports."

Carmack's logic is simple: There simply is not enough potential to monetize a native Linux port for game studios to invest the time, money and effort. So what if you started a company which ported popular games to Linux on behalf of a publisher? Carmack states that even if you were able to show a potential profit, it would need to be significant in order to recoup the high ancillary costs that most large publishers incur regardless of the size or scope of a port.

What is the solution to this problem? According to Carmack the solution is to invest more resources into projects such as WINE, which allow for the installation and execution of Windows applications in Unix-based operating systems. He states that, " ... figuring out exactly what the difficulties are and making some form of 'D3D interop' extension for OpenGL to smooth it out is a lot easier than making dozens of completely refactored, high performance native ports."

At the end of his explanation Carmack also stated that Steam could be, "a plausible path forward."

This spurred responses from gamers in the Linux community who have been feeling optimistic regarding native ports of Linux games following Steam's long-awaited release of the Steam for Linux Beta client. Some expressed concern regarding the current state of WINE. Even in games which are listed as Platinum, there are still a litany of errors and fix-me's that occur when those applications are run.

I certainly would like to see the application continue to grow and improve, however this does not mean that I do not want native ports of my favorite games to show up on Linux. While I'm not convinced that WINE is the right permanent solution to gaming on Linux, I think that it is a viable option for those of us who would prefer not to dual boot to Windows.

What do you think? Leave a comment or start a discussion on Google Plus. I'm +Eric Finkenbiner for aGNUdomain.net

02/13/2013

aGNUdomain.net unplugged: As we ramp up our upcoming aGNUdomain.net site, I thought this Linux Command Cheat Sheet from Dave Child was ideal -- it is the money if you want Linux commands at your fingertips or as a Valentine's Day 2013 gift for someone you love who loves Linux. And it's free, courtesy cheatography.com. Yum. Beats chocolate. Not diamonds, though.

Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called “Linux,” and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project.

There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine's resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: The whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called “Linux” distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux ...

Many users do not understand the difference between the kernel, which is Linux, and the whole system, which they also call “Linux.” The ambiguous use of the name doesn't help people understand. These users often think that Linus Torvalds developed the whole operating system in 1991, with a bit of help ...

Programmers generally know that Linux is a kernel. But since they have generally heard the whole system called “Linux” as well, they often envisage a history that would justify naming the whole system after the kernel. For example, many believe that once Linus Torvalds finished writing Linux, the kernel, its users looked around for other free software to go with it, and found that (for no particular reason) most everything necessary to make a Unix-like system was already available ...

They found an incomplete GNU, though. The free software was the end result only and solely, Stallman says, because the GNU Project was on a project to build it since the mid 1980s.

Read The GNU Manifesto. In it, Stallman and his fellows clearly spelled out their mission of creating a free, open-sounce (and Unix-like, in that) system. Do you recall the initial announcement back then? That initial announcement presciently set out the goals and plans for GNU.

But did you know that the GNU system was alm? By the time Linux was started, GNU was almost finished by the time Linus Torvalds started to work on his version of the Unix-like kernel, now known as Linux.

And those, like the work of Don Knuth (TeX) and Bob Scheifler (Remember X Window, the 1990s GUI?), were supposed to be projects for a single task.

In his excellent piece on gnu.org, Stallman gives us a rhetorical well worth considering:

If we tried to measure the GNU Project's contribution in this way, what would we conclude? One CD-ROM vendor found that in their “Linux distribution,” GNU software was the largest single contingent, around 28% of the total source code, and this included some of the essential major components without which there could be no system. Linux itself was about 3 percent (then) ... the proportions in 2008 (were) similar. Linux (was at) 1.5 percent and GNU packages were 15 percent ... so if you were going to pick a name for the system based on who wrote the programs in the system, the most appropriate single choice would be “GNU.”

Note, again, as Stallman does, that the GNU Project never was a project for developing a text editor. "It was not a project to develop a C compiler, although we did that," he writes. "The GNU Project set out to develop a complete free Unix-like system: GNU."

Torvalds of course played a huge role. His Linux in 1992 completed GNU to create a combined Linux/GNU that was free, open, workable and extensible.

Bottom line, as Stallman points out, calling Linux the word "Linux" is confusing because it clouds the fact that, while the kernel in fact is Linux. But the system as a whole is GNU -- plus Linux. Tell your friends. Education is good.